January 30, 2005

I fell asleep last night just as the polls opened in Iraq, so I anxiously turned on the news at 6:30 this morning, with an hour and a half left until polls closed.

What an awesome thing to witness the joy of the Iraqi people given a voice in their own government. They know that they risk their lives by voting and carry the marks on their ink stained fingers, then proudly display those ink stained fingers to the world. Take that terrorists. I honestly don't know if I would be so brave. Today the people of Iraq spoke for themselves with their votes and their blogs:

January 28, 2005

I finally made it to trivia night at Keegan's. I want to thank everyone there, and especially Jo, for going out of their way to make me feel welcome. Our team didn't win, but then again neither did Fraters, ha ha ha. (They did get 20 of 25, the same as the winning team. but they had five people on their team so the prize was awarded to their competition, a team of two.) Our team came out of it with a presentable 18 of 25.

I got through some e-mails before everyone arrived thanks to the free wifi, which gave me a great excuse to blow off doing any work when I made it home. Yeah! If I keep this up, people might actually believe I have a social life. (Well at least I can pretend.)

Update:Policyguy, who was on the Fraters trivia team, informs me via the comments that they did win the prize after all.

January 27, 2005

Throughout the Bible, God sent his prophets to the people. Their job was to speak God's word to the people. Unfortunately, that usually meant telling them that they were on the wrong path and needed to turn back to God. As you might imagine, this message was not always welcome and the prophets often paid the price. (You've heard the saying, "Don't kill the messenger?) For example:

Jeremiah told the King that Babylon would win the war and th0se who surrendered would live. He was cast into a well for his advice.

Do we have modern day prophets? What might a prophetic message to America look like today? I've always thought the message of this song had the flavor of modern day prophecy:

Keith Green: Asleep in the Light

Do you see, do you see
All the people sinking down
Don't you care, don't you care
Are you gonna let them drown

How can you be so numb
Not to care if they come
You close your eyes
And pretend the job's done

"Oh bless me Lord, bless me Lord";
You know it's all I ever hear
No one aches, no one hurts
No one even sheds one tear

But He cries, He weeps, He bleeds
And He cares for your needs
And you just lay back
And keep soaking it in,
Oh, can't you see it's such a sin?

Cause He brings people to you door,
And you turn them away
As you smile and say,
"God bless you, be at peace";
And all heaven just weeps
Cause Jesus came to you door
You've left him out on the streets

Open up open up
And give yourself away
You see the need, you hear the cries
So how can you delay

God's calling and you're the one
But like Jonah you run
He's told you to speak
But you keep holding it in,
Oh can't you see it's such a sin?

The world is sleeping in the dark
That the church just can't fight
Cause it's asleep in the light
How can you be so dead
When you've been so well fed
Jesus rose from the grave
And you, you can't even get out of bed

Oh, Jesus rose from the dead
Come on, get out of your bed

How can you be so numb
Not to care if they come
You close your eyes
And pretend the job's done
You close your eyes
And pretend the job's done

We've all become accustomed to the accusation that we are literally killing the earth by our mere presence leading to global warming. Hollywood took up the cause and produced the worst movie ever, the Day After Tomorrow, (ala the 1983 nuclear scare movie The Day After.) Instead of frightening us about global warming, we were all terrified by the stupidity of the plot. But, I digress.

Scientists have traditionally
viewed the relative stability of the Earth's climate since the end of
the last ice age 10,000 years ago as being due to natural causes, but
there is evidence that changes in solar radiation and greenhouse gas
concentrations should have driven the Earth towards glacial conditions
over the last few thousand years.

What stopped it has been the activity of humans, both ancient and modern, argue the scientists.

Over the last 8,000
years carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have gradually risen,
when previous trends indicated that it should have dropped.

Methane, another greenhouse gas, had also increased instead of fallen.

First Reaction: Make up your minds, people!

Second Reaction: Whoo Hoo! My SUV is saving the planet, baby!Third Reaction: I lived to see the Population Bomb theory disproven. I didn't believe them when they said there was a global warming crisis. Why would I believe them this time?

And don't miss the thoughts on voting from this Iraqi citizen at What If?:

Mr. Ron, I have lived many years in Iraq. I can remember before
there was a Saddam Hussein in Iraq. I have never been free to vote
here, Mr. Ron. Iraqis don't know about voting. If I don't get killed
going to vote or at the voting place, my vote may not even count
anyway. So what have we gained? But I will tell you something, Mr. Ron;
they will have to kill me to keep me from voting.

Save that quote for the next person that tells you we have no business being in Iraq.

Apparently we announced a year ago that we'd like to build a permanent base on the moon so we can explore the lunar surface and also travel from the moon to Mars. Either I missed that or have forgotten it. There's just so much stuff the average brain can hold onto these days I guess.

A team from the University of Houston in Texas came up with the idea to have robots melt moon dust, which could then be used as a substrate for solar cells. Now they've taken it one step further and simulated what the robot would need to do inside a vacuum chamber.

The Macintosh was unveiled 21 years ago yesterday, Jan. 24, 1984. Someone saved a Betamax tape of the event, now converted to digital for us all to enjoy. Go here to read the details and see the video.

How much of an Apple geek am I? Watching it actually gave me chills. It happened a few months before my wedding and the one thing Hubby informed me before we got married was, "I'm getting a computer." He just thought I should know that information up front, I guess. So we got hitched and then bought our first Apple. Followed by many, many others and two kids. I'm blaming it on that because it would be just too weird otherwise.

P.S. Someone help me out here. I can see the post that I've linked to has trackbacks enabled, but I can't figure out where to find the trackback address. I've seen this a few times in the last week or so. Is it some kind of new system? Did I mention that I'm HTML impaired for the most part?

Yes, I understand the adage that when you get to accusing someone of Nazism you've lost the debate, but I couldn't think of a more fitting description. Of course I'm talking about this story:

Four employees of Okemos-based health benefits administrator Weyco
Inc. have been fired for refusing to take a test that would determine
whether they smoke cigarettes.

The company instituted a policy on Jan. 1 that makes it a
firing offense to smoke -- even if done after business hours or at
home, the Lansing State Journal reported Monday.

Their reasoning is they don't want to pay for the health care costs associated with smoking. Their CFO is oh so proud of their success:

Climes estimated that about 18 to 20 of the company's 200 employers were smokers when the policy was announced in 2003.

Of those, as many as 14 quit smoking before the policy went into place. Weyco offered them smoking cessation help, Climes said.

"That is absolutely a victory," Climes said.

This is health discrimination plain and simple. Let's play the discrimination game. You know how it goes. We replace smoking with other health care issues and see if the policy continues to sound so wise. For example:

"I don't want to pay for the results of those 5 gin and tonics my CFO has after work."

"I don't want to pay for the results of the unprotected sex Boyd in the mailroom has every weekend."

"I don't want to pay for the results of that donut habit Jenny in accounting has."

I'm sure the CFO would consider the victory just as wonderful if the company monitored his sex life, what he ate, and any consumption of alcohol, right? "Oh, and we've offered Boyd chemical castration so he can keep his job. Isn't it a wonderful victory!"

Next we can move on to genetic tendencies, because a lot of heart issues and cancers spring from genetic dispositions, right? The goal is to control health care costs after all. The next thing you know, we're living in Gattaca.

I hope the fired employees sue and take them for more than their health care costs ever could have been. We have to stop the nanny state somewhere.

Smoking Disclaimer: Smoking sucks. I know. I started when I was young and stupid. I hope you never start. I wouldn't recommend it to my enemies. However it doesn't change the fact that a company should not be able to fire their employees for legal activities done on their own time.